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Baked Eggplant

A baked eggplant dish with a breadcrumb and butter filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Eggplant and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,123 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Baked Eggplant

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the eggplant

  1. Wash the eggplant.

  2. Boil the eggplant in a kettle of boiling water for about 30 minutes or until tender.

  3. Remove the eggplant from the boiling water.

  4. Cut the eggplant in half.

  5. Carefully scrape out the soft portion, leaving the skin intact.

  6. Chop the scraped eggplant.

Fill and bake

  1. Mix the chopped eggplant with breadcrumbs, butter, salt, and seasoning.

  2. Spoon the mixture back into the eggplant skins.

  3. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs.

  4. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for a few minutes to brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Eggplant + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,123 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Eggplant + buttertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together507 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggplant
Forms the soft filling and the skin shells that hold it.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and add a crisp, browned topping.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the topping brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Scrape out the eggplant without tearing the skin. The skin shells must stay intact to hold the filling. Boiling until fully tender makes the flesh soft enough to scoop cleanly, and cooling it slightly first makes handling safer and easier.

Swap the eggplant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Eggplantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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